I say that because the amount I pay in taxes is well under what I receive back in terms of  being able to live in a functional society (and I probably pay more in taxes than a fair fraction of what the US population earns, BTW.)  Ironically I am probably more capable than most in surviving in an environment where it is commonplace to kill other people to protect what I have (and to gain more) but it is worth a lot to me to not have to live such a life.  Just not needing to see the lower third and the old people starving and suffering because they are the weak is worth a lot to me.

Now it is true that such things as the double-tap drone strikes, extraordinary rendition, security apparatus surveillance centers, etc, etc bother me greatly and I am very much against them.  But cheating on my taxes is not going to make these problems go away and indeed is likely to bring a lot of grief to myself and halt my own progress in other areas.  Funding and participating in efforts which expose and work against such abusive programs is a more productive use of my resources.

I say that because of a conversation I happened upon once between several of the current primary devs who seemed confused an dismissive of Satoshi's fixation on keeping the system lean.

Crypto-currencies of the Bitcoin variety actually have a potential for pretty convenient tax collection.

In one conception of crypto-currencies, I sort of envision 'competitive management' which includes taxation among other things (such as inflation, issuance, etc.)  In this form almost any entity who wished could issue a currency.  Say the state, county, city, and any private organization who wished to.

Those entities who managed their currency well would have a strong currency and those who didn't, a weak one.  Most people would hold a variety of the currencies they used most often.  Even at scale exchanges should be able to operate profitably on a pretty tiny cut so I don't see a problem converting between them when necessary.

Nobody within 100 miles, and nobody interested in more than about 1/5 the USD values I want to deal with.  Hopefully time will change that.

I'd put the figure at whatever number can be mined in one day.  This is admittedly pretty arbitrary.

So if one has, say, around 1800 BTC now, they might be in the 'wealthy elite' category in a little under 4 years.  If they don't sell or lose them, or if the system does not collapse that is.

I would not call the current debt-based monetary systems or the providers which service the public under them 'outdated'.  They are tuned to a high level of perfection using the force of (what I consider fascist) government muscle and media propaganda to control the populations and extract the maximum amount from them.  Both from a monetary and privacy perspective.  And, of course, to transfer the proceeds to private individuals.


I personally keep a fairly minimal amount of assets in the bank in the form of demand deposits, or in any paper form which has counter-party risk.  Indeed, seeking options was one of the driving forces which steered me toward Bitcoin in the first place.  It is also why I am kind of discouraged about the direction that Bitcoin seems to be going from a philosophical point of view.

I cannot speak for others.

You have a fairly imaginative way of reading...and it translates into incorrect conclusions FWIW.

But yes, I made a highly speculative investment in Bitcoin in part because I could see various ways in which it could pay off.

It is true that I don't feel 'violently abused' by paying taxes since I don't tend to subscribe to Libertarian dogma without careful consideration.  I've never sucked off the government teat (like our dear friend Ms. Rand) yet, but I'd do it if I find myself in need at some point.  If I don't, great!

Actually, from what I can see in the little bit of looking that I've done, yes.

Not 'my idea'.  I just call it like I see it.

The who 'fundamentally different' nature if Bitcoin is a great marketing ploy which could give it a giant leg up on it's competition.  Alas, it probably won't have much basis in reality.

Centralizing the control will depreciate it's value to you and me, but most people won't give a shit.  Indeed most people will welcome measures to stop criminals and tax cheats and I'm sure that this will be how it's marketed.

While I find the trajectory distasteful personally, it probably is my best hope to never have to work again in my life.  And the cat is out of the bag so I'm sure that there will be other solutions which match some of the features that I find important.

I don't really want/need a profit, but if I had no net fiat in and was sitting on a pile of BTC that would be ideal.  I continue to have attachment to my BTC and wish to retain a large percentage of them to see what comes down the pike.

Mt. Gox has 3 or 4 BTC I sent them but I've never done any trading on that platform.  It's futile to send more because they very well could old them hostage until I provide identification details which I do not trust them with.  And they certainly would require such data if I wished to trade and receive fiat.

Now, if Mt. Gox moves to 'the land of the free and the home of the brave', I'll probably entrust my identification data to them, but this is largely because at that point they will be having important customers who will be enforcing industry standard data accountability.  Or ideally, just completely outsourcing transaction authorizations to government bodies.  This works for me as a non-criminal who intends to pay my taxes.

Sure.  Bitcoin is on a course to become a leader in the new space of virtual currencies.

Most of the primary developers and those leading successful businesses in Bitcoin-land are pretty up-front about their friendly posture towards mainstream economic players.  And the path of least resistance vis-a-vis scaling is to move toward large-scale deployments.

Anti-bank dead-enders are going to end up as road-kill 100 miles back.  Indeed, that process is actually well underway already.  These people were critical in bootstrapping the solution, but their participation is rapidly becoming unnecessary and, frankly, kind of embarrassing and detrimental to increased adoption.  Of course such people may also end up quite wealthy if they hold on to some secret keys.

Although I am deeply in the 'light footprint' camp, I find it equally valid that people who signed on to Bitcoin thinking that it could scale to become the world's economic system could be feeling slighted.

I honestly can say that I recognized the conflict within seconds of having a basic understanding of Bitcoin, but then I have a background in operating datacenters and dealing with fairly large amounts of data.  Even if Merkle pruning had progressed it really would not fully solve some of the more difficult scaling issues.

Neither the 'peer-2-peer' concept nor the 'replace the banks' concept were ever deprecated and I consider the Bitcoin project fairly disingenuous in this failing.  To blame individuals for their own particular differences in opinion is not really completely appropriate in my mind.

What am I?  Chopped liver? 

Seriously, I am going to get real about converting about $10k of BTC into cash, gold (1oz rounds) , or junk silver if/when we get into the $50-$60 range.  Anyone who thinks they are going to want to put their money where their mouth is is welcome to PM me to start working out the arrangements.  I'm in the Pacific NW and will want to do such a the transaction face-to-face in a secure environment.  Also I'll probably want to work out an 'earnest money' type escrow to cover expenses if there are any that impact me.

If someone is thinking about this and they are pretty clean legally, it probably makes more sense to buy through one of the specialists right now and take the hit on the various fees.  But I'm just planting a bug in the ear at this point and things could more pretty quickly.  We've seen Bitcoin rise and fall by a significant percentage of it's market cap pretty quickly in the past and I expect it will continue into the future.

I've been in pretty high spirits in 2013.  For real!

I'll be even more happy when I re-claim my initial investment.  I've always expected to do that at around $100/BTC (if ever) but may do it sooner.  After than I can more easily just lay back and see where this thing goes without checking the ticker so regularly.

If I were not so opposed to sending Mt. Gox a full identity theft kit things would be easier.  As I've mentioned before, anyone who is in the Pacific NW and has around $10k in cash, gold, or silver they want to convert to BTC is welcome to PM me though I'll probably only get real serious at around $50-$60 range.  And I'll be arranging things carefully so there is a very minimal chance of getting ripped off.

Now if Mt. Gox goes full mainstream US that might solve my problem.  At that point I'll feel confident that their security measures are appropriate and some hacker is not going to assume my identity.  Of course I have every intention of paying my taxes, and the US Govt already has my passport data...they having issued the thing and all that.  And maybe at that point Mt. Gox would just give me my fucking money rather than stringing it out like Inaba claims they have done to him.

I'll not 'veto' an effort to have Bitcoin evolve to a high footprint system which natively competes head-on with mainstream solutions, but I expect that it will either fail outright or eventually be perverted to the point where it is worse than nothing.  All the same, I'll hope that I am wrong and wish it well.

I expect that there will be enough like-minded stakeholders to operate a light-weight solution which focuses on security.  If so, I'll be one.  As I said on one of my few OP threads, I feel that the resources needed to light-weight chain if security and credibility outweigh a profit motive are well within the reach of what a small number of enthusiasts can muster.  A chain maintained as an insurance policy against subversion of the 'real' Bitcoin does not necessarily need to spend it's gestational phase of life in highly profitable mode and a fairly small group of maintainers is something which has less potential to be subverted.

I've always specifically expected that all of my monetary input which acquired BTC would be a total loss.  A highly speculative adventure.  No matter what happens vis-a-vis the block size, I'll be re-claiming my initial investment one of these days.  Then the remaining BTC can sit for years.  So if the blockchain forks I'll have plenty of time to see how things progress.  I could have my hand forced if one chain forces a legacy spend of course, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I remember that quote.  It mirrored my attitude at the time, though I didn't anticipate doubling down anywhere near as often as I did as the price continued to drop.

The guy has not been seen since a couple months after the statement.  At least on this forum with that username.  I hope he retained the attitude because at this point a person would be at least at about break-even no matter when they got in.

It strikes me that Satoshi seemed more sensitive to system footprint than many of those who came after.  Both in design and in configuration he seemed to have left Bitcoin in a condition which was suitable more for a reliable backing and clearing solution than as a competitive replacement for centralized systems such as PayPal.

By this I mean that the latency inherent in the Bitcoin-like family of crypto-currencies are always going to be a sore point for Joe sixpack to use in native and rigorous form for daily purchases.  And the current block size is a lingering artifact of the time period of his involvement (actually a guess on my part without looking through the repository.)

I was disappointed that (now) early development focus was on wallet encryption, prettying up the GUI, and the multi-sig stuff if this came at the expense of merkle-tree pruning work.  I personally decided to make lemonade of lemons to some extent in noting that although I thought the priorities and direction were a bit off, the chosen course would probably balloon the market cap more quickly and I could try to make a buck off it no matter what the end result of Bitcoin might be.

I've logged many passenger hours in high-winged tail-dragers or on floats.  Recently I was a passenger in a Cherokee and it was unbelievable how nice it landed.  Attributed to low wing design, but the pilot was private but I think reasonably skillful.  Even a shitty pilot can grease one on often enough so a sample of one landing does not mean much.

I've yet to get my pilots license.  Flying is fun, but expensive and thus not worth it to me.  When BTC gets into the 4 figures USD per, I'll likely change my mind on this   Also stopped riding a motorcycles (on the street) after a crash.  Risk/reward ratio not favorable.

If by 'useful' one means 'stable', I would certainly say that Bitcoin is.

I've got no use for a currency which is going to be ripped apart and subverted due to some nebulous and wistful hopes of destroying the most powerful entities that the earth has ever know (our current banking institutions) and/or being able to cheating on one's taxes.

Almost the only thing I've ever done with BTC is donate them to causes I appreciate.  Or appreciated at a point in time.  Probably the largest amount with to Wikileaks, but it could have been to an abortive project originally convinced of by ~evoorhees.  Cannot really remember the name of it.  Operation Bitcoin or something dopey like that.  Last I knew ~trentbz or some such had control of them.

I've donated token amounts to scammers/plonkers (a term which fits many if not most Bitcoin related 'titans of industry') so the Bitcoin Consultancy and whoever ran bitmarket.eu have a few which I used to own.  No more than I expected though.

A vast majority of the value I hold passed through Tradehill in the form of BTC and USD.  They shut down with grace and left me completely whole even though they held the not insignificant amount of fiat I hoped to pump into BTC if the price got down into the $1.xx/BTC range.  They also, however, have proof of my identity, IP addresses vs. time, and so on.  Unless they trashed it.

I remain at risk of donating what is a fairly significant about of value to Instawallet thanks to the recent price run-up but so far ~davout and company have proven reliable and competent.  Mt. Gox could get me for a few BTC at their leisure as well as I recall...and they already gave a throw-away name and one-time password hash to third parties.